Is this normal - time remaining has minus sign

Question

Level 2

321 points

Is this normal - time remaining has minus sign

Finally got a verifiable file on my 5th try today and the install seemed to be progressing well, but then the Installer said "About a minute remaining... Then it went to "About -3 minutes" and has been increasing minute by minute, with the count preceded by a minus sign. It's now up to "About -13 minutes" - the thermometer bar has been full since it said "about a minute" ---- do I have a problem here?

imac 2.8 Core 2 Duo, ipad 3.2.1, iPhone 4, MacBook, Nano, Mac OS X (10.6.5), 3 GB RAM

Posted on Jul 20, 2011 8:28 PM

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Answer 1

nsteblay

Level 1

19 points

Jul 20, 2011 8:33 PM in response to pberk

Look in the mirror to see if you're getting younger. If so Apple has really out done themselves this time. 🙂

Sorry. Shouldn't joke. How long has the install been running?

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Answer 2

pberk Author

Level 2

321 points

Jul 20, 2011 9:10 PM in response to nsteblay

I actually liked your joke ;)

This whole thing was weird - when it became -23 minutes I took a break and when I came back 10 minutes later, the thermometer had regressed and it said "About 9 minutes remaining"... And the installer is progressing again and now it's back to "Less than a minute."

If I didn't know better, I'd think that the installer didn't like it's install, went back 23 minutes in time and then started reinstalling from there...(I 've never seen an installation start counting time in negative territory!)

It's been running quite a while (definitely more than 40 minutes) and it's been stuck on "less than a minute" for a few minutes now, but it does seem to be doing something so unless someone can tell me what is going on and how to fix it, I guess I'll just hang with it for a while and see what happens...

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Answer 3

pberk Author

Level 2

321 points

Jul 20, 2011 9:19 PM in response to pberk

Wow... After all that the computer just restarted....looks like it's happening, finally (my desktop icons are huge now)... But the scrolling tutorial came up and now it's beach balling on the "Setup Assistant " so I think it must be progressing...

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Answer 4

pberk Author

Level 2

321 points

Jul 20, 2011 9:24 PM in response to pberk

And I just had my first Lion crash - "DashboardClient" quit unexpectedly"

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Answer 5

nsteblay

Level 1

19 points

Jul 20, 2011 9:55 PM in response to pberk

My install finished too. I have a very vanilla environment - all Apple software except for MS Office 2011. So far so good. I have a magic mouse and love the gestures. The full screen is great. Will take a while to learn the ins and outs.

I would imagine most problems will be with earlier software that has issues with the new O/S.

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Answer 6

Jul 20, 2011 10:16 PM in response to pberk

I just had the same experience.

My Lion install stuck at 100% on the bar with negative time remaining increasing as time went on. It got to about -20 minutes ( I was searching these forums for info on a different computer, so I didn't see the exact number) and appeared to be hung. Then suddenly it reset to the bar to about 50% complete and the time remaining jumped back to 20 minutes and it started accessing the hard drive again.

I hope my install completes this time.

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Answer 7

Jul 20, 2011 10:38 PM in response to Dennis Cote

I thought I should follow up and let you know that my Lion install completed successfuly after its period of negative time remaining.

It has rebooted and I am looking at the new login screen.

The moral of the story is "patience is a vurtue".

Off to see what is new.

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Answer 8

Jul 21, 2011 6:05 AM in response to pberk

This happened to me too. Thought it was an error and restarted the install, left it alone (after reading this thread, I thought it was just me) and by the time I woke up this morning, Lion was successfully installed. It looks like I have to re-install iTunes (the install overwrote the upgrade I did BEFORE installation, grr!) and I had to reboot my router, but so far all is good. Had a slow initial startup but since then things have been fairly smooth.

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Answer 9

Jul 6, 2012 11:56 PM in response to pberk

That's Lion saying "I'm just gonna be reeeeeal quick... Just a moment now... BLEH NYEH NYEH... TRICK'D YA SUCKER!!!"

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